Representing Perpetration in Documentaries on Genocide

Project Information

PERPREP

Grant agreement ID: 101025897

DOI

10.3030/101025897

Project closed

EC signature date 25 March 2021

Start date 13 September 2021

End date 12 September 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 328 968,00

EU contribution

€ 328 968,00

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PERPREP (Representing Perpetration in Documentaries on Genocide)

Reporting period: 2021-09-13 to 2024-09-12

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Documentaries play a significant role in shaping public understandings of genocide and are the most common film genre on the subject. Yet, film scholarship has typically taken a narrow approach to depictions of genocide, reading atrocities separately, analysing only a small subset of often well-known films, focusing on the depiction of victims only, and paying little attention to the production context. By contrast, my project is a wide-ranging comparative study that analyses how numerous genocides and their perpetrators have been presented in documentary film. Spanning seven 20th-century genocides across three continents and combining interviews with filmmakers, distant reading methods, content analysis, and historical research, my project tracks the multifaceted representational strategies of over 200 films, addressing both the local and global contexts impacting their production. I highlight and critique dominant trends in documentary representation, proposing a broader and methodologically innovative approach to studying the depiction of atrocities that provides an encompassing framework for understanding genocide documentaries and their discursive and socio-political impact.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I have published four articles on this project and I am currently working on a book (the proposal is under review at Edinburgh University Press). I am working on one more article related to this research.
For this project I have carried out field research in Rwanda, Cambodia, and Indonesia, where I interviewed filmmakers, filmproducers, and activists. I have also given an extensive presentation of my research at an artist's collective in Jakarta, Indonesia and discussed my research in a discussion round at another artist's collective in Jakarta, Indonesia.
I have also scraped web-filmographies (Yad Vashem, Cinematography of the Holocaust) and graphed their data. A continuously updated version of the website is visible here: https://jackewiebohne.shinyapps.io/shiny1/
I presented my findings at three different conferences (International Association of Genocide Scholars Conference, Barcelona, International Communication Association Conference, Toronto, Holocaust in Colour, Newcastle) and organized a conference and workshop at Copenhagen University where I presented as well.
Together with my supervisor Thomas Brudholm I ran the Ethics and Violence Cluster at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies of Copenhagen University for which we secured separate funding.
I have also presented my research at two different Danish schools as part of the Danish Science festival and will organize student workshop and present my research findings in a departmental lecture at the Université Catholique de Lille (upcoming, November 2024).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The expected academic outputs of this project are 4 journal articles and a book (which will take longer than the project itself). The hand-compiled dataset of genocide documentaries that is extensively annotated is published in an open repository and can be freely used. I've presented my research at several specialist and non-specialist forums, including two Danish schools, major conferences, two discussion and presentation rounds at artists collectives in Indonesia, and one student workshop and academic research presentation in Lille. I am currently working on a website that will continuously be updated: machine learning functionalities will be made available in the next release.
I expect to finish the book, additional article, and website by January 2025.